


Still I Lay Beguiled

by Dandyton_Lady



Category: Steam Powered Giraffe
Genre: Canon Trans Character, Family Feels
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-23
Updated: 2019-09-23
Packaged: 2020-10-26 19:22:05
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,754
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20747432
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Dandyton_Lady/pseuds/Dandyton_Lady
Summary: Rabbit wakes up...different.





	Still I Lay Beguiled

The first memory when he came to himself was a smell of something acrid, the tell-tale smell of hot solder and the subtle underlying smoky tinge of burnt wires. his eyes were closed, and he kept them that way, lying utterly still, betraying no hint of his consciousness. A silent stock taken of his situation. he was prone, but somehow lying so his head was a bit higher than his feet. There was no pain, but something was off. For several minutes he lay as one dead, considering what was different. It seemed, in some part of his wiring, that something was missing. When it came to the fore of his thoughts, he actually twitched a corner of one eye and his fingers flicked inward in a clutching at the smooth steel at either side of his hips. The pinch was gone.

It hadn't been pain, not really. He'd felt pain before, the terrible body soreness from wounds and from sadness, but for the longest time there had been a feeling like something was too small, too confined. Like a pinch from too-tight trousers might plague a human being. The lack of it was … strange. There was a new openness in its place, and while he didn't want the pinch back, its loss was noteworthy. Once,when he was younger, Peter had gotten the hiccups. He'd had them for hours and hours until, suddenly, they just stopped and he'd said he kind of missed them for a while afterward. Maybe that was what this feeling was. A missing hiccups feeling. Hesitantly, a single eye creaked open faintly.

There was a low light, a soft bluish glowing that radiated about the room. The sound of bubbling and the hum of electricity was faint in the background as he looked left, then right. There was something in his peripheral and the metallic lids dropped and rose until he realized they were eyelashes. Long, curvy, luxuriant lashes of the thinnest blackened wire. A sudden urge to flutter them danced up in his chest like a flock of butterflies. The other eye opened.

Brows knit as he sat up and swung his legs off the table. A faint creaking of joints when he stood and wavered a moment, adjusting internal servos to accommodate for the change in center of gravity. Hesitantly, he walked toward the figure at the end of the room only to realize that … it was himself, or rather, herself. He was a girl! He blinked rapidly and leaned in, moving her jaw and widening her eyes, tilting her head this way and that to take in the new faceplate and how it moved. It was familiar, but not. It was still the pretty coppery sheen and the soft tealish green patina here and there to bring color and interest. Her head was no longer the smooth dome, but heavily adorned with screws and bands of black and red that, at the back, shifted to wires and plugs that made a pretty clacking sound whenever she turned her head quickly. The biggest change was the pair of rabbit-like ears that stuck up and turned out, as if alert to every sound, though only her actual ears were capable of hearing. Those were now stuck through with large hoops that bumped her neck as she shook her head. The 'tink-tink-tink' sound, mixed with the sound of gears and the clickity-clack of her wire 'hair' was almost musical in itself.

Her dress was black and there was a soft glow from her boiler grate. She twitched visibly in surprise to note, there were chest bumps beneath it. A fingertip rose, shaking a bit, and with a grimace, as she had no idea what would happen, she poked one gently. Boobs! Brows shot up and she did it again, a grin spreading. She had never had any real gender-defining equipment before. It was kind of weird, but she felt worlds better somehow. Smoothing down her skirt, having made sure the only lady parts she'd been given were on top, she pivoted a little at the waist, then back the other way. It made the skirt swish a little and it felt nice. She turned her back to the mirror and craned her head around to see the bright red bow at her waist, the same red as the stripes in the black tights that covered her legs, the stripes vanishing into tall shiny black boots. She felt whole. She felt happy, and she felt … pretty.

“I see you're awake.” The voice of Peter Walter the sixth drifted forth, a sort of hollow and distant thing, that nonetheless was comforting and full of good humor and warmth. The black space, like a keyhole in a door, was turned toward Rabbit as he approached, the wooden mask making his hair poke up all around it. He needed a haircut.

“I...I am...” Rabbit closed gloved fingers around her throat. She'd expected a soft voice like Annie's maybe, but it was the same one that had always been there. “Rabbit?” Unsure if that was still so.

“Of course you're Rabbit. You're more Rabbit than you've ever been, actually.” Peter moved to a side table, littered with bits and bobs, gears and pistons and a half-eaten green apple on a chipped plate. “You see...” he turned back and held up a yellowed sheet of paper. “The Colonel's original designs. I found them folded in an old journal that was hidden in a wall. Never would have found it if Hatchworth hadn't been dancing around in those new shoes of his and broke through the plaster in the hallway. See here...” he pointed to a drawing of a very angular but obviously female Rabbit between The Spine and The Jon. “You were meant to be like you are now. Your intended body had to be scrapped when you had to be outfitted to fight the elephants. When you got back, it was one of those things he obviously intended to fix judging by the journal entries, but then World War One broke out and he couldn't send a lady into war, they wouldn't allow that ... and by then, you'd been dressing and acting as a male so long, he perhaps thought it was best to leave you that way.”

Peter set the paper down and began inspecting Rabbit as he continued. “But, it's been plain as the nose on my face ...” he paused, the tone slightly sarcastic in that self-directed jibe. “... that you've been getting more and more unhappy. You were fine when you were performing, but when you weren't, well, then you were obviously troubled and it's been getting worse and worse. I hated feeling that there was nothing I could do.” The note of sadness in the faintly echoing voice was clear. “Then I found the journal and the plans and I thought... maybe this is why he's... I mean, why she's been so unhappy of late. Too many years in the wrong chassis. So when it came time to upgrade you, I went back to the original drawings. How... how do you feel?”

Rabbit looked back at her reflection. She was a girl, but she could still see the same Rabbit there. Despite the differences, she was still who she had always been, just... more. She didn't feel any loss for the old shape, the new one felt somehow more right and more comfortable. “I like it. I used to feel... smooshed. Like you said, I didn't fit me right. The me I am inside. Now, I can breathe better.” She used the term as an example as breathing was not something that was strictly required all the time. A sudden frown touched her face and Peter stopped his inspection of her arm, now bared with the gloves rolled down to her wrist. “What is it, Rabbit?”

“Now that I am a girl... I have to be different.”

“What do you mean, different?” Peter rolled the gloves back up her arm and took her hand, pulling her over to sit down so he could sit across from her.

“Girls play tea party and dolls. They don't fight skeleton pirates or have saloon brawls or anything fun like that.” Rabbit's voice quiet as she concentrated on her fingers which were now twisting nervously in her lap.

“Well, who says?” Peter chuckled. “You're still the same Rabbit you always were. You can do anything you want. You can play tea party if you want, and you can still fight with The Spine.” He knew that their 'fights' were more play than anything truly vengeful. Describing them to someone outside of the family though would sound a little dark. I mean, stringing your youngest brother up and beating him until candy fell out? It sounded a trifle violent, but Peter knew it was all in fun. “You can be a princess, or you can be a pirate. If you're worried you won't fit into your Captain Alexander costume, I promise, your … chest, is adjustable to whatever size you want it to be. You can be anything you want to be, Rabbit.”

“But … you're not supposed to hit girls.” Thinking of all the fun she'd had scrapping with The Spine in the past.

“Hitting to hurt is different than hitting for play. You shouldn't hit anyone to hurt them, whether they're a boy or a girl or a puppy or a unicorn.” Peter gave Rabbit's arm a pat. “But playing is fine.”

“But... what if they treat me different? What if they won't let me … hang out with them anymore.” A little creaking sound heard as often happened, the strain of a tension spring turning tighter and tighter.

“Don't be silly. They're right outside and they've been asking about you all day.” Peter stood up and moved toward the door. “If you're ready, I'll let them in.”

Rabbit looked a little nervous, afraid that they'd reject her, that they'd treat her differently, that they'd not love her or welcome her. That she'd be alone. She'd lost so much in her life already, and the thought of losing The Spine and Hatchworth... it was too much to bear. Still, she couldn't hide in there all her life. “Okay.” Standing up, she brushed off her new dress, the tensions still running high and she felt as if her heart were hammering in her throat. She checked her reflection one more time and gave a little half smile at the new Rabbit in the mirror. “Let them in.”

**Author's Note:**

> Originally written March, 2014


End file.
